It turns out the US Navy heard the implosion that killed the five passengers aboard the Titan submarine before the search for the missing sub had even properly began.
The Wall Street Journal revealed in an exclusive report that a classified US Navy sound detection system designed to detect enemy submarines picked up an “anomaly” that was “consistent with an implosion or explosion in the general vicinity of where the Titan submersible was operating when communications were lost”, according to a senior military official.
It picked up the sound not long after the OceanGate-owned submarine departed on Sunday. If you’ll recall, the sub lost communication with its mother ship one hour and 45 minutes into its dive.
The US Navy passed this information to the US Coast Guard after it was announced the submarine had vanished. However, the US Coast Guard continued the search for the missing crew, resulting in a five day search, because the Navy didn’t consider the data to be “definitive”.
Only when the 96 hours of oxygen that the sub was presumed to have had run out on Thursday did the US Coast Guard announce the passengers to be dead.
It has since been confirmed the passengers died shortly after the sub went missing on Sunday morning when it imploded due to a “catastrophic failure” of its pressure chamber. The news came after debris was found near the Titanic wreck that the submarine was exploring.
The deceased have since been named as OceanGate CEO Stockton Rush, Pakistani man Shahzada Dawood and his 19-year-old son Suleman Dawood, billionaire Hamish Harding, and pilot Paul-Henri Nargeolet.
While the news was devastating to family and friends of the passengers aboard the Titan sub, it’s been a small comfort to know that they would have perished “instantly” in the devastating crush, rather than suffering for five days.
(Image Source: OceanGate)
